


Per-Mission

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hc bingo 'hallucination'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Per-Mission

"Got him?"

"Yeah. Straight to medibay."

"Anyone called Ratchet?"  

"Doing it right now."

"Primus. I hope we got to him in time."

***

They'd called Ratchet, sure, just as the shuttle had boosted from the asteroid.  He'd spent the time laying out the equipment, laying it out again, and then scowling at it.  Head injuries: not his favorite. And from the panic in Trailcutter's voice, this wasn't going to be a handy patch job.  He looked at his hands--Pharma’s hands--and hoped they’d do the job.

He could have left it to First Aid: the other medic's qualifications in cerebrosurgery were just as high as his, and even more current.  The only thing was...it was Drift.  The mech he'd first met in Rodion, boosted half out of his brain module. There was a sick symmetry he was trying really damn hard not to think about that said it would be fitting, in a way, to meet and then lose Drift via head injury.

They banged through the outer doors of the infirmary, the grav gurney gliding along, its soft hum muffled under the bustle of their hurried feet.  

Ratchet stepped out from the surgisuite.  "Here."

He didn't like what he saw already: too much pink spattered over the white armor, too much stillness, Drift's body limp as a doll's, one hand swinging like a slow pendulum as the gurney slid to a stop.  And the smell, the unmistakable bitter burn of bad wiring. Ratchet moved around the head of the gurney, looking at the puddle of pink and grey pooling under the slack head.  The left parietal zone was caved in, metal stripped of its enamel, blackened from a small short.  It meant heterolateral internal concussion damage, as well, he catalogued, as they lifted him off the gurney, onto the surgislab.  

“You got this?” Rodimus looked about as worried as he ever could, which made Ratchet wonder exactly how this whole thing went down. But that was one more thing to worry about than Ratchet could handle, so he shoved that to the back of his mind, shooing them out.

“Let you know when I know,” he said. It was the best he could promise.  

“As soon as you know,” Rodimus said, standing in the doorway, as if his Command Bluster(tm) could do anything here.

“When I can,” Ratchet said, crowding Rodimus out the door. He wasn’t going to interrupt a procedure to assuage guilty consciences. “I’ve got work to do now.” That was as close to a goodbye as Rodimus was going to get, as Ratchet punched the door closure, the steel panel slidilng between them.

The scowl fell from his mouth as he turned, wheeling the equipment tray closer. “Not even going to ask how you did this." Even if Drift could answer, he didn't want to know. It was Drift, which meant it was stupid and reckless. That was probably all he needed to know.  He picked up the first, basic tools, the ones he needed to peel off the upper layer of armor, to get at the brain module itself.  That part was easy, technical, and had the almost calmness to it that doing something that required patience but no real danger, gave.  

It was the part that came after that he dreaded, and it came all too soon, where he had to pick up the cerebrocable, attaching it first to his own data input, and then into the feed jack in the freshly exposed, dented brain module. He could see the pinpricks and scores from millennia ago, from Drift's circuit boosting habit and he tried not to think how they might have compounded the damage.  

Cerebrosurgery was different from mnemosurgery: mnemosurgery dealt with the data stored in the hardware; cerebrosurgery in the hardware itself. So he couldn't manipulate or erase data, but he had to dodge around it, making sure that he left as much of it as he could intact.  

He'd done this hundreds of times, in the course of the war. It never got easier: it always felt far too intimate, far too intrusive, dancing around a mech's living circuitry.  Still, there wasn't much choice, so he sighed, and flipped the toggle to activate the link.

***

Drift felt himself floating, falling down, up, to one side or another: he couldn't tell what direction, just a sense of weightlessness and movement toward...something.  

He remembered the battle, faintly, like it was something that happened to someone else, and it seemed to fade from him, as though it were stepping backward into an ever-thickening fog.  

He didn't care enough to pursue it, not with any real strength, so he let himself be pulled, or pushed, or simply surrendered to whatever force was moving him.

A light seemed to grow, glowing from a nothingness that wasn't so much darkness as the absence of anything, like the space between breaths.  He felt it approach, or he approached it, the world seeming to brighten around him and through him, feeling it swell and grow, until it seemed to coalesce, reveal itself to be...

"...Wing."

It could be no one else: so white he seemed to shine as though lit from within, as though his armor was translucent, like ricepaper lanterns he'd seen in Japan.

"Drift." The word floating through the nothingness around them, a recognition that seemed to snap Drift into a greater solidity.  

"How?  Where are we?"

WIng gave an easy shrug, as though the question was not hard at all. "That place beyond place and time."

"A-am I dead?" He had to be dead. He could imagine no other possibility, why he'd be seeing Wing again.

Wing shook his head.  "Unless you want to be."

He...didn't know. He loved the Lost Light, he wanted to help fix the damages from the war, to be part of building a better Cybertron, but...if Wing was what awaited him in his death that was more of a temptation than he deserved. If nothing else, he thought, this was a chance to speak to Wing, to say the things he hadn't been smart or brave enough to say before. "Wing," he said, his voice heavy with beginning, "What you did, back on Theophany."

"Worth it," Wing said, simply.  "Worth it to buy your freedom, worth it to be able to see what you've become."  

Drift felt himself shrink back, uncertain.  "Wing, I--I wasn't worth it."

"I say you are. Watching you, following you, gave me more of a life than I'd had in millennia in Crystal City."  The smile turned wistful, even so. He stretched out a hand, and Drift reached with his, and for a long moment they stood, hands entwining, palms pressing together, intimate and still somehow shy.

Drift tried to take it all in--Wing watching him, following him from beyond death, loving the life Drift was leading.  "It...has been an adventure," he admitted, quietly, as if seeing his own life in a new light.  

"It definitely has," Wing agreed.  

He remembered what Wing had said earlier: he was dead if he wanted to be. Did he want to be?  The Lost Light seemed distant, and Wing so here and radiant and alive, waiting, as he did in Crystal City, with infinite, delicate patience, for Drift to decide.  "I love you," he said, finally, testing the words, to see how they changed things, if they tilted the balance one way or the other.

"And I you," Wing said.  "But that can always wait."

"I don't want to lose you again," Drift said, and his fingers tightened in Wing's, almost desperate.  

"I will be here for you, however long it takes," Wing said.  "Everyone you love will. And you will for everyone you love."  Such a simple and beautiful truth that Drift knew it had to be real. He could never make up anything so beautiful and pure.  

"There isn't anyone else," Drift said, firmly.

"There can be," Wing said.  "Drift, love isn't like a pile of shanix that you spend and spend and then there are none. Everyone you care for builds a little room on your spark, a shrine or a home for them near your spark, and with each, you get more to give."  

Drift could almost feel it, as Wing spoke, a little pressure on his spark, like a little space in honor of Wing, pushing outward with a wonderful sort of poignancy.  

"You can," Wing whispered, stepping closer, and something seemed to ripple between them, a charge of air that seemed to defy the boundaries of their bodies, warm and sweet, "love again, Drift."  

It was an invitation, a permission, something that made Drift aware of the world, the life, he'd led behind, and he realized he'd held himself back, always, because of Wing, not wanting to take anything away from the jet, dishonor him by forgetting.  He knew that wouldn't happen now, couldn't happen, and life seemed to burst into color. And he felt the slow pull backwards, like a harp string, thrumming with current, connecting him. He felt himself stretch back along it, and he knew he'd made his decision. "Wing," he said, plaintively, one last time, their hands stretching between them, trying to hold on to each other, even as he let go.

"Go, Drift," Wing said, fondly, his fingertips sliding over Drift's palm. "And may you add many, many new rooms to your spark."

***

Ratchet straightened, unhooking the lead from Drift's cortex, the end dangling as Ratchet moved to close up the cranial armor.  He was too old for this, he thought, too old for seeing the memories and minds of others at work. So many times it was like wading in endless trauma, the damage of millions of years, sometimes it was dissociative, utterly divorced from reality like a defense mechanism, a wall of unreality.  But only rarely something like this: a naked, raw hope, a wish, something deep under the surface, bittersweet and real.  He hated to online Drift, but he had felt Drift coming back, returning, as he'd cleared the last of the shrapnel, picked off thick clots of energon.

Drift gave a soft sound, almost a moan, his vocalizer filling with charge, and Ratchet could hear the hiss of the filaments in the blue optics onlining.  It took a moment for the optics to focus, and Ratchet saw a smile bloom on Drift's face, something he'd brought back from the threshold where he'd been.  

"Ratchet," Drift said, the word tingling and crackling with intensity, as he raised one hand to pull the other end of the cerebrolead from Ratchet's head almost tenderly.  "You wouldn't believe what I saw."

"Yes," Ratchet said, trying to grab for his professional demeanor, his customary gruffness, but all he could see was Drift with Wing, like a piece falling into place, and this jet he'd never met who'd finally done what Ratchet had tried to do all those centuries ago: give Drift something he could find inside himself if only he looked. It didn't matter if the vision had been real or just a hallucination. It was real in all the ways it needed to be, all the ways that brought Drift back.  

So he didn't fight when Drift pulled him closer into a tight embrace, chassis to chassis.  And he could almost feel the pain of loss filling in Drift's chassis, a wound he'd never thought he could heal, and he could swear, despite the fact that part of him thought--knew--this was all just an electrochemical reflex, that none of it had been real--he still felt something like a warm smile from someone he'd never met, welcoming him like a neighbor.


End file.
